California State University Dominguez Hills is a university with great ethnic diversity among the students. Enrollment figures show fifty-eight percent are non-white, with Black American as the predominant minority (33%). During the two years of the entire MBS grant period (1977-1979), 19 MBS students were given the opportunity to conduct Biomedical Research, which for most was their first time research experience. In addition, the MBS program strengthens the graduate program of the Biology Department, the only regular graduate program in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. It enables many graduate students to choose the Thesis program option rather then the Comprehensive Exam Program. We are now seeking the continuation of MBS support for another 3 years period (1980-1983) to train more ethnic minority students for biomedical research. This application includes 5 projects, 4 in the department of Biological Sciences and one in Chemistry with 5 principal investigators, all with Ph.D. and 1 co-investigator M.D. (Project I). During the academic years the P.I.s will participate in research in about 25-30% and in summer all will work on the project full time (2 mos.) and supervise the project. The objective of the various projects include: (1) Attenuating Schistosoma japonicum cercariae with NTG to see if they may be immunogenic in mice, and (2) To study the immune responses of mice to the cercariae in order to understand the mechanisms which operate during granuloma formation and modulation, (3) Synthetic routes to the Tropane Alkaloids, (4) Membrane synthesis and degradation in photoreceptors of Octopus, (5) Ethambutol action in cell free system of mycobacterium.